Multifunctional Materials for High-Performance Double-Layer Organic Light-Emitting Diodes: Comparison of Isomers with and without Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) with simple structures are attracting a lot of attention nowadays, though their performances are always inferior to those of the more complicated structures as multifunctional materials are rare. Here, we have designed and synthesized multifunctional isomers by combining electron-donating carbazole (Cz) and triphenylamine (TPA) units with electron-accepting triazine (Trz), namely, N-[4-(4,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl)phenyl]-N-[4-(9-phenyl-9H-carbazol-3-yl)phenyl]-[1,1′-biphenyl]-4-amine (CzTPA-p-Trz) and N-[3-(4,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl)phenyl]-N-[4-(9-phenyl-9H-carbazol-3-yl)phenyl]-[1,1′-biphenyl]-4-amine (CzTPA-m-Trz). The use of multiple electron-donating groups gives them suitable highest occupied molecular orbitals for hole injection and high mobilities for hole transport. Hole-only devices with CzTPA-m-Trz or CzTPA-p-Trz as the hole injection layers and hole transport layers show a higher hole current than the widely used 1,4,5,8,9,11-hexaazatriphenylenehexacarbonitrile/4,4′-N,N′-bis[N-(1-naphthyl)-N-phenylamino]biphenyl system. Interestingly, CzTPA-p-Trz is a fluorescent material with a high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY), while CzTPA-m-Trz shows weak thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF). As expected, a CzTPA-p-Trz-based undoped double-layer green device achieved a higher external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 4.4% and a higher power efficiency (PE) of 11.8 lm/W. On the other hand, among double-layer devices doped with an orange phosphorescent dopant, a device based on TADF material, CzTPA-m-Trz, achieved higher peak EQE (23.5%) and PE (68.3 lm/W) than those of CzTPA-p-Trz (20.8% and 60.2 lm/W). Even at a high luminance of 5000 cd m–2, a high EQE of 21.8% was retained for CzTPA-m-Trz-based devices. These results are even comparable to those for the state-of-the-art phosphorescent devices based on the same dopant with more complicated structures. The above results indicate that well-designed multifunctional materials are promising for high-performance OLEDs with simple structures.